


the heat death of the universe

by sanctuary_for_all



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-23 23:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20898218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: He still hasn't told the team you're back together. (Set late season 9/maybe early season 10).





	the heat death of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> *Pushes fic out of moving car before driving away at high speed.*  
  
Listen. I really, REALLY don't like Rachel. If anything, I dislike her MORE now because she made me write this fic. But sometimes characters need to talk so loudly that it's either write it down or get a headache. I posted this mostly so I could delete it off my phone.

He still hasn't told the team you're back together.  
  
Danny hasn't come out and admitted it, but you know this as well as you know your own name. He hasn't lost all his tells, in the years you've been apart, and you hear the way he carefully talks around you when you're next to him and a member of 5-0 is on the other side of the phone. He used to do that the other way around, edit his current case out of his speech like he was chasing himself with an eraser, because he didn't want to bring work home with him. You used to snap at him for it, resenting the wall he put up around part of his life. He always used to say he was trying to protect you.  
  
You're not the one he's protecting now. 

Still, you are very, very careful not to snap at him for it. You both handle each other so much more delicately than you used to, painfully aware of all the broken pieces that still lay between you. You just as carefully make sure to never talk about any of them. Danny always bled far too quietly for your piece of mind, but somehow you've managed to pick up the same habit.  
  
It's not the only way you've changed, in the years since your ring was on his finger. Time has scraped away all of your blazing confidence, a series of catastrophic personal errors stripping away the certainty that used to propel you through life. The worst mistake you made is the one where you're not even exactly sure what you did, the one that turned the loving, fiercely loyal man you married into into the bitter ball of rage you finally left.  
  
And yes, it takes two to destroy a marriage, and he brought out all your worst qualities the same way you brought out his. But it's an inescapable fact that he eventually reverted back to his original self after you left, with that old beloved spark finally returning to his eyes that first year you were both in Hawaii. Your absence healed him, and his only left you feeling lost enough to burn through a marriage to a good man. Danny helped with that, but the ultimate choice had been yours.  
  
If given the chance, you're terribly afraid you would make the exact same choice again.  
  
It's the same reason you stay silent now, no matter how much the ghost of the woman you used to be burns at the back of your throat. The memory of her wants you to bring Danny lunch one day, wrap your arms around him in the middle of the office and give him a long, slow, kiss. Nothing crass, of course, but very obviously possessive. In movies, it's the sort of thing wiv-- girlfriends do all the time.  
  
But you don't, because if Steve McGarrett happened to be standing there you're not entirely certain what Danny would do. He's the one Danny tries to protect now, the living ghost you've come to accept will forever be a third part of your relationship. You wonder, sometimes, whether you play the part of the illicit lover or the betrayed spouse.  
  
You will never, ever ask Danny that question.  
  
Instead, you've tried to make peace with it. You've resented McGarrett for so long that it's not an easy road, but Danny himself has learned not to ask certain questions. He's relearned his gentleness, in the years since you had him last, and as much as you treasure it you find yourself hating McGarrett all over again. _He's_ the one Danny relearned his gentleness for, not you. You're just the one benefiting from it.  
  
You get a small, viscous sense of satisfaction from that, but the truth is you don't know if you've stolen him from anyone. McGarrett is a cypher you know almost entirely from occasional moments of crisis and Danny's endless stories, and you have no idea if Danny has as much of him as he has of Danny. You're tempted to hunt up one of his old girlfriends, to ask if their relationship had its own living ghost. 

It seems only fair that McGarrett suffer the way you're suffering.  
  
But you don't ask. And you're oh so careful, because if you're not then you might force Danny into making a choice. Last time you tried that, he chose Steve. You're not foolish enough to make the same mistake twice.  
  
The old you would be horrified that you're so meekly accepting crumbs. But the old you hadn't spent as many sleepless, lonely nights as you had. She hadn't looked back at the long tunnel of her past and tried so hard to figure out how it had all gone so very wrong. She hadn't needed to look her husband in the eye and tell him that his very sick son wasn't biologically his, or look at the love of her life and tell him that he was. You've learned there are worse things than crumbs.  
  
You wonder, sometimes, if Steve McGarrett would agree.  



End file.
